We Must Become What We Wish To

If You Have High Self-esteem, You Might Still Know Times Of Emotional Suffering, But Less Often And With Faster Recovery-your Resilience Is Greater.

Stressing The Practice Of Living Purposefully As Essential To Fully Realized Self-esteem Is Not Equivalent To Measuring An Individual's Worth By His Or Her External Achievements. We Admire Achievements-in Ourselves And Others-and It Is Natural And Appropriate For Us To Do So. But That Is Not The Same Thing As Saying That Our Achievements Are The Measure Or Grounds Of Our Self-esteem. The Root Of Our Self-esteem Is Not Our Achievements But Those Internally Generated Practices That, Among Other Things, Make It Possible For Us To Achieve.

To Attain "success" Without Attaining Positive Self-esteem Is To Be Condemned To Feeling Like An Imposter Anxiously Awaiting Exposure.

To Accept Struggle As Part Of Life, To Accept All Of It, Even The Darkest Moments Of Anguish; To Be Motivated By Love Rather Than Fear, By Confidence Rather Than Insecurity: These Are The Benchmarks Of High Self-esteem. The Wish To Avoid Fear And Pain Is Not The Motive That Drives The Lives Of Highly Evolved Men And Women; Rather, It Is The Life Force Within Them, Thrusting Toward Its Unique Form Of Expression-the Actualization Of Personal Values.

Some People Have A View Of Self And Of The Universe That Obliges Them To Struggle For Happiness, To Yearn For Happiness-"some Time In The Future"-perhaps Next Year Or The Year After That. But Not Now. Not At This Moment. Not Here. Here And Now Is Too Terrifyingly Close, Too Terrifyingly Immediate. They Suffer From Happiness Anxiety.